Together: A Dark Romance Duet || Leon Kennedy x Female Reader

Chapter 23: FMC

I wake to the sound of a scream, pained and guttural.

My breaths are quick and panicked—sprinting further and further away from me, while I'm never quite able to catch up. My heart slams against my ribs like it's trying to break free of its cage. Along with my heart, my chest feels hollow, like it holds nothing but air and even that sensation is fleeting because I feel like I've stopped breathing altogether.

The scream echoes in my ears, and it takes a moment for my brain to catch up before realizing it was my own. My throat is raw, a sharp stinging yank on my vocal cords. Fuck, I must've fallen asleep. I know I did because in my return to the land of the living, my brain recalls all the details of my dreams. I stew in them before they flee, recollecting images of loved ones covered in gore. Humans turned to monsters in a city where Hell came to Earth. Nightmares again, the usual trauma played over and over like a horror movie starring people from my life. Gunshots and sirens and cries of pain, of sadness and suffering. The scenarios are unfocused as dreams usually go, but I especially remember one as if I was completely conscious: My skin turned ashen and veiny as if blood no longer flowed in my body. My skin withered, tearing at the slightest movement. My limbs locked, becoming heavy and brittle. I watched myself turn into a living corpse—and then I felt hunger.

In my dream, I let that hunger consume me, the virus whispering demands like a worm in my ear. Hunger drove my limbs forward as I sank my teeth into my mother's flesh, ripped away a chunk of muscle and sinew. Heard her cry before she screamed at me to stop. And her scream morphed into my own.

I rub my throat, trying to ease the tension. Finally, my chest fills with enough air to calm my racing heart and convince my brain I'm not dying. I blink away the drowsy fog and gaze down at my hands, my body. The dark veins under my skin are a light gray now, seeming to have faded in time since I drank that...vile liquid. My clothes and shoes are intact, a bit rumpled and stained the same way I remember before falling asleep.

I gaze around at my surroundings, noticing how the bright white-blue light of a full moon illuminates my cold, damp cell, allowing me to make out every corner.

The moon. How is the light of the moon reaching me this far underground?

God, my head is pounding. I have the worst headache I think I've ever experienced, but that doesn't stop me from scrambling to my feet.

There's no point in wondering what time it is or how much time has passed. I have no clue—but I do know it's still night. Or is it night once again? Did I sleep through the day only to wake up to another night? All of it is possible. The only form of time that matters now is how long I have before I turn into one of them. Clearly, that hasn't happened yet. My thoughts are still my own.

A cool breeze fills my empty cell, and I know immediately I'm not in the same cell they locked me up in within the dungeons beneath Ramón's castle. The cool breeze picks up, augmenting an icy chill that rakes through my body. The source of the draft is an open window carved out of the stone wall above where I slept. Metal bars stand in vertical lines within the square window, offering the prisoner a taste of escape without allowing the possibility. I grip the window's metal bars, the ice biting into the raw skin of my palms as I observe the view.

My cell sits cliffside above the ocean, the water's surface calm and glazed in the moon's light, reflecting the full orb at itself like an alternate reality.

How the fuck did I get here?

I lean my forehead against the bars and look down, down at where the waves gently crash against the rocky foundation holding up the castle, creating a soothing ambiance that I can only faintly hear from this height. The jagged rocks look so far away, too far to even consider leaping from this window to my escape and remaining alive if that were possible.